And there it was. There was my death sentence.

“Oh, pipe down,” Sun WuKong said.

“Pardon?”

“I know your aura and I know your mind.”

I stayed still for a moment, wondering if he was saying what I thought he was saying.

“I won’t kill you, or torture you, or erase your memory or any of the other things you’re thinking of.”

“Thank you for your mercy, Great Sage,” I said with a deep bow.

“You don’t believe me?” He asked.

“I-”

“I know you don’t believe me.” He stated.

My heart beat harder. I felt like a cockroach in the kitchen with the lights on. My mind was scrambling for any surface to hide under, but in front of this being, there was none.

“Why?” He asked.

Because your strength alone makes you terrifying. To you, I am an insect and you hold my very existence in the palm of your hands. One irritated breath from you would send me tumbling into oblivion. And even if you did let me live. Even if by some miracle I gathered your favor and you chose to let me live, it would only take one moment of annoyance for you to change your mind and kill me.

Shit.

All of those thoughts had happened in one sudden swoop of anger, and that anger was quickly followed by regret. If he could read my aura as well as I believed he could then those thoughts would be there, almost written out in the edges of my qi, and I would die.

I readied myself for death, if death was what I’d get. I could only hope for something quick and permanent. I thought back to Ah-Marin, back to Gauntlet and that newborn child sleeping in that room. She would live, but the whole realm of Ah-Marin wouldn’t.

He’d probably take her and nuke the realm on his way out. Chin Chin, the Maidens, the beasts, everything. Hundreds of billions of people… just gone. All because I couldn’t control my own thoughts.

Then, I heard snickering. The snickering grew, turning from a stifled laugh to outright howling.

The Monkey King was sprawled out on the metaphysical ground, slamming his hands against the floor in laughter.

A joke. Ah, okay. Alright. He is Sun WuKong, the mischievous Monkey King who fought the Old Gods out of boredom.

I did my best to not express my current feelings and instead bowed so that I wouldn’t have to look at the laughing monkey any longer.

After what felt like an awfully long amount of time for a place where time doesn’t exist, Sun WuKong finally stood up.

“Ah, we’re almost there, aren’t we?” He asked.

In all of the stress, I had forgotten to use my senses.

I circulated a technique, an old one. One that I had found back when I had just broken into the immortal realm. It was called, Seeing Through The Void.

It was a vision technique, one that turned all of the qi signatures within the void into light, allowing a person to ‘see’ them. It would translate qi into light and allow one to ‘see through the void.’ It was almost useless to me at this point. My own divine senses were more than enough to see all the qi signatures around me, but old habits were hard to break.

Lynoria burst through the void, shining like a nebula. It shone in colors that didn’t exist, burning through the void and bathing both WuKong and me in a beautiful light. The celestial realm lit up through the blackness, like galaxies in the distance. Certain figures could also be seen, wading slowly through the darkness. These were God-Imperiums, most likely of the non-human kind. They rarely bothered to hide themselves, and others even strutted leisurely, like a tiger walking through its jungle.

“Oooh?” WuKong said, staring at the colors like a mystified child.

“What a beautiful technique…” He stated as we approached the nebula. “Where did you find it?”

“Ah-Marin,” I answered. “It’s called-”

“Seeing Through The Void,” he interrupted. “It’s an ancient technique. Nothing powerful, but it is quite valuable.”

“Valuable?”

“Yes,” WuKong answered without elaboration.

The stream of qi we were riding started to merge with other streams as we got closer to the realm, and in the distance, other cultivators and creatures started to come into view. Qi signatures started to pop up from all over, some demonic, some righteous, but most were neutral.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

If you were to try and map out the central realms on paper, well you couldn’t because the infinite void of nothingness couldn’t be expressed on a two-dimensional plane. But if you tried to anyways, you’d have the Heavens up north and the Hells down south and Lynoria would be somewhere near the western front. It was the largest celestial realm before you tapered off into the outer void, and was one of the most important celestial realms within existence.

It was an unaffiliated realm and took no sides in any major conflict outside of its borders, making it a refuge for most people, regardless of their previous allegiance. It also enforced its nonviolence rule religiously. Killing here would get you prosecuted, regardless of sect, status, or power.

There was even a time when a God-Imperium had invaded the celestial realm and killed one of their wayward disciples. Once they had done so, WuKong himself had come down and slain the God-Imperium on the spot.

That itself was a ridiculous concept, but that death set an example for eternity to come. To this day, feuds within Lynoria never resulted in anything more than lost limbs. And unless those fights were sanctioned duels of some sort or internal clan dealings, people being killed within the realm was practically unheard of.

That made the place a major trading center for everyone throughout the multiverse. Almost anyone who had anything to sell could be found within the gates of this city. Everything from spiritual herbs and alchemy pills to ancient cultivation skills could be found here. The only things you couldn’t find here were things concerning slavery or demonic techniques.

If existence had a capital, then this was it. Here you would find members of every major force. The guaranteed peace made it the most attractive place for talks between any groups and parties, and the guaranteed peace and loose restrictions made it the perfect spot for merchants who found the tight rules of the righteous sects unappealing. And eventually, the celestial realm gained a nickname, the Realm of Merchants and Ambassadors.

Along with all of that came untold trade and imports. Every celestial sect worth a damn had a base here. Even if their wares were demonic or banned within this realm, just having a representative here would open them up to many contacts. Which, ironically enough, made it both one of the safest places in the multiverse and one of the most dangerous.

Safe if you were planning to live for the rest of your natural existence, dangerous if you ever planned to leave. Within these realms were the most powerful groups of people throughout existence and while they couldn’t hurt you here, they could certainly hurt you outside of the realm. So everyone here had to be careful of how they acted, aside from the natural denizens.

“Seven,” WuKong suddenly said. “I’ll give seven favors as a gift.”

I looked over at the Monkey King, unsure if this might have been another one of his jokes.

“I’m being serious,” he commented.

“Can I ask why Great Sage?”

WuKong’s head turned curiously.

“Isn’t it obvious? Three for each time you made me laugh, and four for showing me something interesting.”

I was quite flabbergasted at that comment. Was that all it took to get these? A few chuckles and spars? I had been actively trying not to die, not curry his favor.

“May I ask what those four things were, Great Sage?”

WuKong smiled at my confusion.

“Sure, and I can answer it as a favor,” He answered.

I thought about that for a moment and shook my head.

WuKong smile got even wider at that. I would have liked to imagine it was a smile of wisdom or satisfaction that implied that I had made the right choice. But instead, it was a mischievous grin, something you’d see in a cartoon.

I still didn’t really know this man. I mean, I knew the stories, but myths and legends were just that, myths and legends. At this point, there were so many realms with so many versions of Sun WuKong’s story that having a reliable and consistent image of him was utterly impossible.

On Earth, he had been a powerful being who tangled with The Jade Emperor and Buhdda himself, but aside from that, almost every aspect of the story differed from realm to realm. Some said he was an evil devil who had eventually gained redemption through the means of finding Buhdda, others claimed he was a virtuous monkey seeking his own path to righteousness and strength. Bits and pieces could be verified for certain, some of WuKong’s fights and conflicts were known to be absolute truth, but the details had long been forgotten to the annals of time, and all those who remembered didn’t really care to retell the story.

“Oh, alright then. Since you have such trouble choosing what you want, I will pick out the favors for you,” he replied.

Shit.

“Oh, there’s no need to trouble-”

“Nonsense,” WuKong cut in. “It’d be a waste to let you decide as it is.”

Wukong’s hands suddenly went down, one by one, until his hands stood closed and he had only a smile remaining on his face.

I gulped.

“You may now use you’re last favor as you wish.”

“May- may I ask what these specific favors were?” I asked meekly.

“Tell me,” WuKong said with that still sly smile. “What do you think a God-Imperium is?”

Shit. Was this going to be one of those long-winded answers masked as sagely-

“Just answer the question,” WuKong said, interrupting my thoughts.

“I don’t know. I suppose a God-Imperium is the peak of the cultivation world,” I responded.

“Such a lazy answer,” Wukong said while shaking his head. “But yes, it is the peak of the cultivation world, and it is the highest peak that most beings can ever achieve. God-Imperiums, no matter how weak they are, carve their existence into reality. They’re so vast and powerful that reality struggles to copy their form. So immense that even in the furthest reaches of reality, you’ll still find bits and pieces of their qi moving and infecting everything it touches.”

Talk about an ego.

“Do you know the difference between a sixteenth-rank God King and a God-Imperium?” Wukong asked.

“It’s said to be bigger than the difference between and God King and a mortal,” I replied.

“That’s one of expressing it, but that’s not quite accurate. It fails to show the true difference between those two ranks,” Wukong said as he looked at me. “No the true gap between those two ranks is that of one and infinity.”

I saw Wukong grow and felt myself shrink. Everything shrunk around me and for a small desperate moment, I thought I had died. I couldn’t feel my qi or my strength and everything but Wukong faded away into nothingness. He had broken past my Void Walker technique, letting his qi and identity invade mine.

No. Not invade, just exist. I wasn’t being attacked by the qi. It had no ill intentions of its own. This qi was like an ocean, uncaring and immense, and I was drowning in it.

I thought back to earlier in our meeting, back when I felt like I couldn’t circulate qi or feel my own techniques. At the time I had assumed that Wukong had been restricting me, pushing the qi out of my body with some powerful technique.

It was only now in my struggle to exist that I realized, he hadn’t been restricting me. No. An ant doesn’t grow weaker in front of a bear, it just realizes how weak it truly is.

Then I passed out.